A crucial year for Lincoln and America

Abraham Lincoln regarded the Emancipation Proclamation as “the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century” because it “knocked the bottom out of slavery.” He announced the Proclamation in September of 1862 and signed it into law in January of 1863. Like most decisions Lincoln made during his presidency, it was controversial both to...

The people who paved the way for a momentous invasion

In the days before D-Day, everyone knew that a seaborne invasion of Europe by the Allies was coming. The big questions were when and where. We now know that the landings on the beaches of Normandy were crucial to eventual victory in World War II. But what was life like in the days just before D-Day? Drawing on a wide range of sources, including letters, diaries, contemporary documents and...

The origins of a deadly conflict

The early years of the 20th century in Europe were characterized by an accelerating arms race. According to historian David Fromkin, "Europe's main business had become the business of preparing to fight a war." In Germany alone, about 90 percent of the Reich's budget was spent on the army and navy. Total arms spending by the six Great Powers of Europe increased by 50 percent between 1908 and...

The clash of cultures at Jamestown

The story of the Jamestown colony the first permanent English settlement in the New World is familiar to most of us, but it has often been hard to separate the facts about the colony from myth. Combining a gift for storytelling with meticulous scholarship, historian David A. Price sorts reality from legend in his splendid new book, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the...

Audio Column by Roger Bishop

The extraordinary talents and outstanding accomplishments of John Adams tend to be overshadowed by the illustrious and colorful careers of his contemporaries George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Adams himself thought his own major attributes were "candor, probity, and decision," and those qualities were crucial as he shared in the leadership of a revolutionary...

An exceptional biography of Adams

The extraordinary talents and outstanding accomplishments of John Adams tend to be overshadowed by the illustrious and colorful careers of his contemporaries George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Adams himself thought his own major attributes were "candor, probity, and decision," and those qualities were crucial as he shared in the leadership of a revolutionary...

After Lincoln: Johnson, partisanship and Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, was chosen by the 1864 Union Party convention (a coalition of Republicans and so-called "War Democrats" opposed to the Civil War) as Abraham Lincoln's vice-presidential running mate because he was a Southerner and a Democrat. A steadfast defender of the Union throughout the Civil War, Johnson was placed on the ticket as an expression...

Partisans

From the late 1930s through the early 1960s, Partisan Review was the most influential literary and cultural journal in the United States. The editors, Philip Rahv and William Phillips, and their circle of writers and critics composed the core of the group often described as the New York intellectuals. Contributors during those years included many of the leading writers of the day from this...

Arthur Koestler's novel of ideas, Darkness at Noon, was originally published in England in 1940 to great acclaim. It has been called one of those books that has ceased to be a work of literature and has instead become a monument. In 1998, the editorial board of the Modern Library named it the eighth best novel of the century.But Darkness at Noon was just one work among many others reportage,...

Between 1929 and 1945 the American people and their political leadership met and emerged victorious over two daunting challenges. Had events gone in other directions, our century could have been quite different. In a brilliant narrative history of broad scope and complexity, Stanford University historian David M. Kennedy recreates that crucial period in Freedom from Fear. The latest volume in...